Fratres et Sorores
by aadarshinah
Summary: When Jeannie McKay was eighteen years old, her parents died. #9.75 in the Ancient!John 'verse; background McShep, Jeannie/Kaleb


__Fratres et Sorores__

An Ancient!John Prologue to _Advena_

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><p>When Jeannie McKay was eighteen years old, her parents died.<p>

To be more specific, when Jeannie McKay was eighteen, her parents had been in one of the _let's try to make our relationship work_ stages of their marriage, the kind in which they kept separate apartments but spent a couple nights a week sleeping at the other's place. Part of this _making it work_ involved extravagant dates, and so it was that her parents utilized the night of her Senior Prom for one of these expensive outings, taking advantage of the fact she'd be gone. When Jeannie returned home that night, it was to a cop car in her drive and it's driver on her front step, waiting to tell her that, earlier that evening, Dad had run a red light and hit an oncoming car. Both her parents and the other driver had died on scene. They believed her father had been drinking and would later be proven right.

After that point, her brother is her only real family, and even that's being optimistic. Meredith had gone off to uni at thirteen, when Jeannie herself was only five, and had rarely been home since, finishing MIT just after his seventeenth birthday and blasting his way through two doctorates before she even had her driver's permit. Still, she'd always gotten along with Mer better than she had either of her parents, probably because of that very distance, and found her brother to be the prefect guardian.

This isn't to say that Mer was a _good_ guardian, oh no, but he was exactly the sort of guardian a girl just starting uni might want. His ultra top secret work with the United States Air Force kept him several hundred miles away and paid well enough that he didn't think anything of paying her college tuition, or for her to live by herself in an apartment off-campus, or for a car. She only called to ask for more money, and he only called to ask after her grades, and, all in all, it is an excitingly stereotypical relationship that served both their needs.

And this is how it goes until her third year of graduate school.

She meets Kaleb while fulfilling her humanities requirement, and it's not to say that he's the one that makes her question the path of her life (Dad had been an engineer and wanted his children to be the same; to this end, Mer's biggest act of rebellion had been getting his doctorate in astrophysics first. After Dad died, Mer had steered her towards an advanced physics degree of her own, and was already talking about getting her hired by the department of the American government he worked for after she graduated) for the first time, but he's the first person to give her a viable alternative.

They're already talking about marriage when she gets pregnant.

When she tells Mer, his only response is to say he'll stop paying her tuition if she goes through with it, obviously believing it's a bigger threat than it really is. He doesn't come to the wedding, and when she calls to tell him about Madison's birth the operator at his office can only tell her that Mer's been transferred to Siberia and that she doesn't have the clearance for the number where he can now be reached.

It's such an obvious lie that Jeannie doesn't try to call Mer again, and half expects to come home one day to a black SUV in her drive and men in suits at her door, telling her he's died.

* * *

><p>She's doing the dishes one afternoon in late July when the doorbell rings.<p>

There's nothing particularly unusual in this, even though she isn't expecting any visitors. Still, when she opens the door and sees her brother standing there, it's all she can do but gape for a couple of minutes before saying intelligibility, "Meredith." He looks older than she remembers, and a quick burst of mental arithmetic reminds her he's almost as old as Dad was when he died.

That thought alone is almost more bizarre than his sudden appearance one her doorstep, and it's enough that she has to open the door further and examine him, to make sure he's not fallen into any of their father's other bad habits.

"Hey Jeannie. Long time no see."

"To say the least!"

Mer looks down for a moment, seemingly genuinely embarrassed (which is enough to make her wonder if she's talking to a pod-Meredith), before retorting, "What, I can't just stop by, say hi to my little sister?"

"Well, considering we haven't spoken in three years and you've never done _anything_ like this..." He looks healthy enough – healthier than she remembers him ever being – and so she assumes this isn't some kind of _I've been diagnosed with a terminal disease _guilt trip he's here on. "No, you can't."

"Well, I've been kind of busy... with work, you know, and some of the places they've sent me have been pretty out of the way. I only got back, er, on business last week and I thought I'd, um, you know..."

"No, Mer, I don't know."

He looks down again, then, curiously, towards the road. There's a yellow convertible parked there, top down, and leaning against it is a dark figure, and things are all starting to _click_ in her head for the first time since their conversation started. This isn't an _I'm dying_ visit, it's _meet the parents. _

"Look," he says, "can we talk about it inside? It's just, your porch probably isn't the best place to have this conversation, and there's kinda someone I'd like you to meet."

"I- Sure."

And this is how Jeannie's brother finds his way back into her life.

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><p><strong>an**: _fratres and sorores _is _brothers and sisters_. _Advena_ is _Foreigner_. I wanted to do the whole of that fic in Jeannie's POV, but it wasn't working. So here's her prologue.


End file.
